


An omen that lies submerged

by vinterskald



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27062110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinterskald/pseuds/vinterskald
Summary: A little prologue of sorts for the Dark Heart of Skyrim, set six to seven years afterLarelleis, and right before the events of Harrowstorm.
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a lil thing I wrote while procrastinating editing my chapters for Larelleis :) It might be the prologue for something bigger, but I can't promise anything yet - still gotta finish Larelleis after all! (which, if you haven't read any of that, features the same character, my Altmer vestige Manerion.) Please enjoy. :)

“Now, now, there’s no need to be scared,” Lorvyn said as he stepped down the stairs, but he knew that while his smile was certainly charming, his eyes couldn’t quite hide their hunger. He hadn’t fed in a few weeks, and this messenger would certainly not be his next meal. No, he had to wait a little longer.

“They don’t bite,” he said, gesturing leisurely at the two large black dogs that had curled up by the fireplace, hesitant to add an ‘and I won’t, either’ to his sentence, “though, of course, if you were a thief that would look different… but you aren’t, are you?”

The messenger stood quite frozen in the entryway of the large two-story anteroom to this quaint, dimly-lit manor built into the Valus mountains right at the border to Morrowind. No part of the border that was at all patrolled, of course; the estate was not marked on any maps, and the tunnels through which goods, refugees, slaves, and soldiers were transported - some of those legally, others less so - had no side caverns that could lead here; a fortune that Lorvyn had paid well for. The messenger knew this of course, but while he had received a sizable sum for his silence, that excluded common chatter with his clients. But right now the boy seemed to prefer to keep his mouth shut.

As Lorvyn finally reached the foot of the stairs and walked over to one of the low tables by the fire, he noticed just how young this messenger was - younger than the others he had seen in the past decades. But he had rarely seen any of them to begin with, as usually, one of the house’s servants cared for such matters. But tonight they were direly needed elsewhere, so the head of the house had to receive the goods for once. And Lorvyn couldn’t help but enjoy it.

“I - I’m sorry, m’lord,” the messenger said. Breton, maybe? But both clumsy and burly at the same time - Nord, then, perhaps? “I don’t usually talk to… I mean, I, well, usually I talk to the Argonian… with the dark scales, you know -”

“Chants-at-Night,” Lorvyn replied, his smile a little softer now that the fireplace shone a gentler light on him. The Argonian with those rich scales and plumes of dark red had worked for him for a few years now, and was usually the one responsible for receiving guests.

“Y-yeah! That one - or sometimes other, I guess, servants of yours, but never… I apologise, m’lord, I forgot all the dec… decar…”

“Decorum?”

“Yes! Apologies, I never thought I’d meet the master of this house personally is all!”

Lorvyn scoffed, but his frown turned into a gentle smile again. “Not to worry. It shall be the same as always - we go through the list of shipments, and then you’re on your way again, yes?” He raised his eyebrows as he would when speaking to a mere child.

“Y-yes, sir!” the messenger replied, and then hastily pulled a bundle of loose papers from his tattered bag, beginning to read aloud. “Assorted medicinal herbs and spices from Alabaster,” he began, pointing to one of the many crates in front of him, “powdered redwater sent by forgemen in the northwestern Jerall mountains,” he pointed to a large jute sack, “24 bottles of Ascadian rose shein sent by Serjo Darvani of Suran…”

The words became a muddle. Lorvyn was too surprised by the fact that this boy with his simple expression and badly fitted woolen hat could read at all to be able to listen much to what he actually said. But as the boy, his cheeks still pink from the cold air of the caverns outside of the manor, went through each of the items on the list in his hands, Lorvyn had time to inspect the crates, barrels and sacks, opening some of them to see if they were indeed what he had asked for. Of course there was no mistake here - on the contrary, some of the vendors had added promotional gifts for him; a fine bottle of flin here, a sample of purple nirnroot leaves there, all of it proving that they had learned not to attempt to deceive him. But one thing was missing entirely.

“I had expected another shipment. Deathbell incense from Hjaalmarch to the north… is it not on your list, boy?” he asked when the messenger was finally through with his list.

From the extraordinarily empty sheen in the messenger’s eyes, Lorvyn could guess that the boy was presently stumbling over his own thoughts, hectically searching through his papers, then his bag, and finally the papers in his hands again, until his face lit up and he nodded. “Yes, sire, I found it just here - the shipment has to be delayed indefinitely, by orders of the border control at the Jerall mountains.”

Lorvyn frowned. Not at any time during the war had his orders have to be delayed, as the underground routes the traders and purveyors took were at all times guarded by a remarkable and meticulously controlled band of mercenaries that had called the web of trading caverns below Cyrodiil their own since the White-Gold Tower had fallen into the hands of the Schemer’s henchmen. If there had been any problem on these routes, he would have been informed, so the issue had to lie within Skyrim itself. 

He sighed. Of course - those recent disturbances had to be to blame, certainly. If what his eyes and ears told him of House Ravenwatch’s most recent pursuit had any truth to it, then someone was, without doubt, trying to cut him off - eliminate any competing hunter before the prey could be spotted. In the past days, he had often pondered intervening, and more and more it seemed for his own good just as well. Not even the Order had objected to aiding this foreign Rivenspire bloodline, and that was a rare occurrence. Maybe it was time, then, to write some letters.

He turned to one of the side tables by the stairs to take the pen that lay on top of it, then sat down at the low table by the fireplace, his back to the messenger, and began to scrawl a message on a pristine sheet of paper. But as the quill scratched across the paper, he could sense the boy approach again.

“You’ve delivered everything,” Lorvyn said, his gaze still focussed on the paper in front of him, then he waved the messenger away. “You may leave now.”

But the boy barely stopped in his tracks. He carefully glanced over Lorvyn’s shoulder from a few pertans away, though Lorvyn figured that with his mortal eyes, he wouldn’t be able to read a single word he had written.

“Uh, sir, are you quite fine?” the boy asked. “It’s just that… your hand - how would anyone be able to read that?”

Lorvyn almost snapped the pen in half. He rose from the table, leaving stains of ink on the paper as he cast the pen away, then faced the messenger and walked towards him.

“You’ve done what you had been asked for, and you may leave now,” he said with a calm voice that didn’t match the glint in his eyes. “Your payment is covered. There’s no necessity for you to stay here.”

The boy took a few steps backwards and almost tripped over a heavy crate filled with faintly shimmering and glistening empty soul gem fragments. He caught himself, turned around and hastily made his way to the door back outside.

“Aye, m’lord, I apologise for the intrusion, I’m - I’m going to leave,” he stammered, then rushed outside.

Lorvyn still remained where he stood until he could sense the presence of that clumsy delivery boy no longer, then closed his eyes and drew in a sharp breath of the sweet air, rich with the scent of fragrant woods burning in the fireplace.

The boy had been right, he had to admit to himself as he sat back down and looked at the paper. The lines of his letters were jittering across the page like nighttime insects by a campfire. No one but himself would be able to make any sense of it. His right hand was quivering so badly that he could barely hold the pen anymore - there was no use in trying again. He ran his hand across his forehead and sighed. Was it only the hunger this time? Tonight, maybe, rose shein in his favourite sanguineous concoction would help soothe his nerves, and he could still worry about the letter once he was a little more collected. 

Something large and warm brushed against his leg - it was one of his two dogs, while the other was still laying leisurely by the fireplace, ears perked up attentively.

“It’s fine, Tzharvadal,” Lorvyn said, crouching down to wrap his arms around the large, warm animal that immediately pressed his cold nose against Lorvyn’s cheek. It wasn’t all that bad suddenly, and the quivering couldn’t stop him from running his hand through the thick, black fur of this magnificent creature with its peculiar wet nose and wagging tail. “It’s fine,” he said again.

If he finally reached out to this person he had been keeping an eye on for some years now already, maybe then he might end up with a worthy contact. But to get his attention, a letter wouldn’t suffice. No… someone who had fulfilled such deeds wouldn’t easily be persuadable. And he knew just how to catch his interest - maybe a trip to Bangkorai would be in order?


	2. Chapter 2

_”To the hands of Manerion of Shimmerene,_

_word of your capabilities has reached far beyond the Summerset Isles, and your efforts all across Tamriel have not gone unnoticed, with your involvement in vanquishing dragons all across Elsweyr being only the most recent of your feats. Thus, I do not worry that the following incident will not only interest you greatly, but also that its elucidation can most certainly be entrusted to you._

_As it happens, it has come to my attention that a largely undisturbed tomb site in south-eastern Bangkorai has recently - if my humble presumptions are correct - been robbed. Certainly, this will sound like an everyday state of affairs to you, considering the riches of the oft cautiously guarded Hammerfell tombs, but this grave was reserved for none other than the King Styriche of Verkarth that grim legends talk of to this day. Furthermore, I have been alerted of dark magics being worked in the area, and I sense there is more at stake here than may appear at the surface._

_With your help, I am certain that whatever threat lies at the bottom of this, it can be disposed of easily. Please meet me on the 13th of Hearthfire, to the east of Hallin’s Stand. I shall enclose a map with this letter. Aside from investigating this ancient tomb and its great historical importance, I want to discuss with you some other findings I have made that may further illustrate the urgency of the situation at hand to you._

_My most sincere blessings be with you,  
\- a friend”_

It didn’t matter how often Manerion read the letter, he still wasn’t sure what to think about it. Maybe it was just the humid, stuffy air in this tea house in Senchal that made thinking so immeasurably difficult, but this sounded like a trap, it just had to be.

Meirion had said the same when he had shown him the letter, after, in the most novelistic fashion, a small, scrawny Khajiit boy had handed it to him. 

“It’s a trap,” had been Meirion’s dry words as the Bosmer had just shrugged. “It’s obvious. They didn’t even bother to give you a name. Most of these so-called ‘friends’ have a shady secret.”

Of course, he wasn’t wrong. If whoever had sent this letter to him truly had an interest in the good, they wouldn’t have had to hide their name, or would they? But truthfully, he could imagine a number of scenarios in which the most well-natured personalities would have to hide under the guise of ‘a friend.’

Was it someone he knew? Even as he went through nearly everyone who might consider him a ‘friend,’ he could think of no one who would have any interest in this tomb, much less anyone who would refuse to give him their name. And since when did he have to care about such things? Wasn’t the help he had provided here in Pellitine enough for a few months already? But then again, he truly did care, whether he was obligated to or not.

He sighed, rubbing his eyes as the waitress brought him yet another cup of mint tea. The mint tea here was so different from what he was used to from other places, and in his time here he’d quickly gotten accustomed to drinking copious amounts of it every day, but still, the humidity made it unbearable in these months, even after sundown. Considering that, it wasn’t even such a bad idea to visit Hammerfell, and there was so little he could lose, too: one wrong word and he could simply retreat to his adjacent place, take a detour through some realm of Oblivion if need be, and it wasn’t like they could kill him, after all.

And he had done a bit of research following up this letter as well - it wasn’t exactly promising. King Styriche of Verkarth had led a gruesome army of vampires, werewolves, witches, and all sorts of undead, but they had been defeated in Bangkorai. Nothing much spoke of their aims, and about any other members of this army aside from Styriche himself. He had done the maths, and if he had calculated correctly, he knew at least two people who had been alive at their time and still were, but so far, he hadn’t really wanted to contact them about it. Too soon - so far, there was nothing he knew at all aside from that potentially, maybe, the tomb might have been robbed, but even that seemed to be a point of contention, if the letter was to be trusted.

Had he even thanked the waitress for the cup of tea? How embarrassing - he’d have to be generous in tipping her when he left, if he didn’t forget that as well. Maybe it was the constant moon sugar vapours that had gotten to his head - he’d been in Elsweyr for so many months now, after all, he wouldn’t be surprised if the second-, and, less voluntarily, first-hand exposition to it had left its effects on him. Meirion seemed largely unaffected by it, but then, there was barely any substance the hardy wood elf had not consumed, was there?

But he couldn’t get rid of the impression that this piece of paper also had a disgustingly sweet scent to it. Who in all of Mundus would go through the hassle of sending him perfumed letters? He blamed it on extravagance, not admiration, but still, it seemed strange. And on top of that, there had been no address whatsoever on the envelope, not even a name, nothing - just a crimson wax seal, which meant the sender had to have gone through unnecessary troubles to have this delivered to him. Possibly, it had involved more gold than one would usually pay for a letter, so the sender either had enough to spend it freely, or found it of such immeasurable importance that it didn’t matter. But added together with this quaint, perfumed paper, and the fine handwriting… it wasn’t unlikely that whoever sent this had a large amount of gold lying around, which narrowed it down even further. In fact, he could only think of two people that would fit these criteria, and one of them would never call him a ‘friend,’ whereas the other had no reason to hide who he was.

He sighed again. There was no use, was there? Tomorrow, he would have to see about notifying the innkeeper that he wouldn’t prolong his stay in Pellitine for any longer. And then, he would simply have to find out who had sent this letter to him, whether it was a trap or not.


	3. Chapter 3

A stinging pain in his side woke Manerion up. Up until now, he hadn’t even known that apparently, he had been unconscious, and who knew for how long. His vision was clouded, but wherever he was, it was only very dimly lit in here anyways - and cold.

Slowly, the memories returned to him. He had been in Bangkorai… followed this quaint letter he had received, speaking of some threat in some tomb of some person he didn’t even remember the name of. Was it… that fellow from Verkarth? He remembered reading about something, some army from the First Era. But where was he now?

He tried to open his eyes, and found he was seated on a chair in some hut or cave - it was dark, at any rate. Someone was sitting opposite to him, but he had never seen this person before. At least he couldn’t remember someone whose chin-length wavy hair and meticulously cared for beard had such a striking dark red colour; like amaranth flowers, almost. Curious red eyes watched him as he attempted to identify them. A Dunmer, that much was obvious, but beyond that, he couldn’t be sure. The soft black fabric of his doublet and the sheen on his impeccably clean leather boots spoke of diligence, pride maybe, but his demeanour said something different: with his left foot resting on his right knee, and his head peculiarly tilted, his slouched posture gave off such a strong aura of recklessness that he had rarely seen before.

“So you’re awake as well,” the Dunmer said in a hoarse whisper, and smiled. An oddly gentle smile from some darkly clad figure he was now meeting for the first time, and in a cave no less.

Manerion didn’t reply. He frowned - he had the urge to rub his eyes, but as he tried to do so, realised his hands were tied behind his back.

“What is going on?” he asked, his voice more croaky than he had expected it to be. How long had he not been able to drink anything?

“Oh, you know…” the Dunmer leaned back in his chair and made a vague shrug. “I found you two sneaking around in what should most definitely not be any of your business.”

“Two?” Manerion looked around. There he saw him - another figure in a chair to his right, positioned between him and the Dunmer, yet off in the shadows. It was an Altmer, most obviously a vampire, tousled strands of black hair hanging into his face, and he could recognise the leather armour he wore as being of Breton style. His heart skipped a beat. An Altmer vampire from High Rock? Surely there could be no relation to… no, he would’ve met him before then, wouldn’t he?

The Dunmer had obviously seen the sudden shock in Manerion’s face. “You know him?”

“I don’t think I do,” Manerion said honestly, but the Dunmer didn’t seem to believe him so easily.

“You were sniffing about the same ruin. Quite the coincidence for two people who don’t know each other, don’t you think?”

Manerion looked at the Altmer again. The young man seemed oddly tired, barely able to keep himself awake, but when he looked around, he avoided both their gazes. “I have no idea who this is,” Manerion said, anger slowly surging up in his voice. “I think you’re the one of us who has to answer for a few more questions, not I! Why am I tied up here? What is this place, and who are you?”

“Oh…” he said softly, clicked his tongue and leaned forward, both of his elbows now resting on his knees. “Not so many questions all at once. This place is just a cavern by some underground tunnel halfway between Taneth and Chorrol. I am… someone representing an interest group. But I have my own interests as well, of course - an interest in the politics of my brethren, an interest, potentially, in you -”

“I don’t care for your interests!” the dark-haired Altmer now said, struggling to try and free his hands and ankles from the ropes he was tied up with, but the Dunmer’s eyes were still fixated on Manerion’s, and he was chuckling quietly, barely paying attention to what the Altmer said.

“You’ll find that the ropes aren’t tied very tightly.” He leaned back again, throwing a disdainful look towards the Altmer to his left. “You just have to put some effort into it.”

This Dunmer’s arrogance was almost admirable, Manerion thought to himself, but still, he barely knew what was going on. “And why did you feel the need to… tie both of us up in here?”

“Oh, that wasn’t even my idea. But it wasn’t a bad one, in the end - who knew if you would both just steal away into the night when I wasn’t looking? And I just had to have a conversation with you first, you know?” His voice wasn’t a whisper by now anymore - honeyed and heavy, oddly soft in how low it was.

“And that is your idea of starting a conversation with someone? Tieing them up in an underground cavern?” Manerion raised his eyebrows.

The Dunmer laughed, genuinely cheerful from how it seemed. “You’re just how I imagined you to be. Oh - that being said, we’ve met before, Manerion; do you not remember?”

Manerion, in the meantime, had tried to free his hands from those ropes - and succeeded, they truly weren’t tight at all and the Dunmer had most probably never intended them to actually hold him back - but the mention of his name still made him hold his breath for a second. “Have we?” He studied the Dunmer’s face again, but nothing seemed to ring a bell.

“Well, truthfully, I made it a point back then that you wouldn’t see my face, better for the trade… the nirncrux you ordered some years ago? Do you not remember?”

“Nirncrux?” Manerion had to say it aloud to bring the memories back. There had been something… when he was still working on the Aurhir’s first prototype, he had needed aetherium and nirncrux, and had met the vendor for these in a fittingly gloomy tavern, but they had pulled their hood down to cast a shadow on their face. “So it was you who sold me that?” The Dunmer just nodded, so Manerion continued. “I can’t remember that the vendor had given me any name back then. So I ask again - who are you? What is your name?”

“Velador.” He followed it up with a silence that seemed to stress the name’s importance, but if there was any, Manerion didn’t know about it. “But if we end up becoming friends, I don’t mind if you call me Lorvyn.”

“And what about him?” Manerion asked now, nodding towards the Altmer who had still not managed to escape from his shackles, though it almost looked as if he had tied more knots into the ropes than had been there before.

“That is -”

“How dare you!” the Altmer interrupted him, but Lorvyn did not pay it any mind.

“- Fennorian, of House Ravenwatch.”

Manerion had to swallow down his initial shock. So it was House Ravenwatch that this Altmer belonged to, as he had suspected. How come he had never heard of him before?

“I thought _that_ would ring a bell,” Lorvyn said with a complacent look on his face. “Don’t suppose I don’t know of your involvement with them. When was it? 584, that the Doomcrag blasted apart? Seven years since then, and I’ve heard so many interesting rumours… that the Count of the House that dear Fennorian here belongs to had since reappeared, but then others say he was quite gone for good, and still others say he did return, only to…” he held up his hand to wiggle his fingers as though he was telling a ghost story, and lowered his voice again, “... disappear again! Just like that, into the shadows.”

“Is that what you captured us for? To talk about that incident?” Manerion asked dryly.

Lorvyn shrugged. “Maybe that would be a nice topic to discuss. Though I don’t mind talking about other things as well - your favourite food, maybe? Which season you prefer for taking walks, or maybe -”

Manerion raised his hand to draw a fiery rune into the air, barely larger than his palm, and with a swift movement, he pushed it towards Lorvyn’s forehead, stopping a mere hair’s breadth before him. For a split second, Lorvyn was caught off guard, but then he merely squinted up at the rune and laughed again.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, we’ll keep this professional. Actually, I was mostly wondering if you wouldn’t want to let me go into the tomb with the both of you. Whatever has happened in there greatly interests me and my associates as well. You can trust me when I say I’m certain you wouldn’t regret having an additional fighter on your side.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Manerion said with a frown. “But you also don’t give off the impression that I would be able to stop you from just joining us.”

“How dare you expect I would value your company after you have trapped me in here like this?” Fennorian huffed, his hands finally freed. “I’ve never met either of you, but this is an important matter for the House, and maybe for Tamriel, and I can’t let anyone get in my way!”

Fennorian didn’t sound as if he had ever heard of him, Manerion had to admit to himself, and his heart sank. But that also meant he was not the one to write the letter to him, maybe none of the members of House Ravenwatch, which meant someone else must have sent it…

“But you wouldn’t think that just because you’re a part of some minor bloodline in a wasteland such as Rivenspire, you would possess some privilege to enter a ruin of this state and importance in Hammerfell, would you?” Lorvyn scoffed.

“And how can I assume your bloodline somehow has a more valid claim?” Fennorian asked.

Bloodline? Did that mean this strange Dunmer was also not a mortal?

“My bloodline is none of your concern, but the Order would advise you to keep your silence,” Lorvyn simply said, and Fennorian truly fell silent. “You should be happy our council agreed on helping you to begin with. This is no scrib colony we’re talking about. It’s the remains of the guardians of King Styriche himself. If you possess any desire to not see your bloodline run dry within the next few years, you’ll be wise to accept the help we offer.”

Styriche… there was that name again. The Vampire King of Verkarth. Manerion remembered ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Pelin’ and its descriptions of the Grey Host, this army of werewolves, necromancers, and all sorts of undead.

“Verkarth…” Manerion said aloud. “How far is it from that tomb?”

“Not far at all,” Lorvyn explained. “It’s basically its graveyard. Far enough from the actual town to soothe the townfolk’s worries about them ever rising up again to wage war against them. Not far enough, though, that you didn’t hear the occasional rumbling rumour. And those got more frequent lately.”

“What do those rumours say?” Manerion tried to recollect the contents of the letter he had received. “Wasn’t something stolen?”

“My… trustworthy, but necessarily anonymous sources claim that things were carried out of the tomb. They’re not sure what. Containers of some sort. They took the usual black market routes, but I wasn’t able to track them out of Hammerfell so far.”

“Graverobbers. Refreshing.”

Lorvyn just shrugged. “I don’t care about their moral integrity unless they plan on doing something… sinister. But as it involves the remains of a vampire king who gave the world much trouble thousands of years ago, I expect it to be something sinister. It takes more than a boyish prank to steal anything from such a place, and on such a large scale. Riches? I doubt they gave Styriche that honour. Nothing in this tomb should be worth anything for someone who just wants to make a grand deal. Hence I propose we simply take a look.”

“Very well then,” Manerion replied. “But do not presume I won’t keep an eye on you in case you try to do anything hasty.”

Lorvyn smiled again. “Oh, I would never.”

Manerion just shook his head with a scoffing laugh as he got up, dusting off his robes and walking around to the back of his chair to get a better look at the place in the meantime. It was really just an empty cavern with a few tables, shelves, and chairs scattered about - what had the Dunmer said? Somewhere between Taneth and Chorrol? That could be anywhere. And it looked like it could be any abandoned bandit hideout, too.

He leaned against the chair’s backrest. “I still don’t understand the necessity of having to take us here. Could you not simply have talked to us outside of the tomb where you found us?”

“Oh, but consider that you don’t have all the facts.” Lorvyn tilted his head again as he looked up to him.

“Which are?”

“Well…” the Dunmer looked away hastily, but Fennorian interrupted him.

“That you’re an immeasurably dubious figure who is incapable of building contacts in any way even just _resembling_ normality,” he said as he also stood up to straighten his posture, though he didn’t do so without looking around the shadows nervously.

“Harsh,” Lorvyn just replied with a smirk.

“Is it the truth though?” Manerion asked, and Lorvyn shrugged.

“Maybe so. This way, however, we’ll have some additional opportunities to plan our move. Shall we get to it?”

Fennorian frowned, then sighed, and eventually dug around in the bag he kept on himself. “Really, I’m surprised to say you’ve apparently not taken any of my belongings,” he muttered to himself, then pulled out something that looked like an old piece of parchment, folded together. “Look…” he continued, and walked towards the others.

They all gathered around the parchment Fennorian was holding up for them. One of them had to be wearing a heavy perfume, Manerion noticed, but he wasn’t sure which of the two.

“This is where I found out about the place to begin with. It’s a map of the surroundings of Verkarth from somewhere around the late eleventh century of the First Era,” Fennorian explained.

The town was nestled into a secure mountain pass, and to the west of it lay a strange little marking. Manerion wouldn’t have known how to describe it to someone else if he had to, since he had never quite seen such a marking before. It was narrow - was it supposed to depict the hilt of a sword? A stylised, strangely long face? Next to it, in red letters, stood ‘danger,’ quite simply.

“Although it doesn’t clearly define it as the tomb, it’s the most precise position I found anywhere. Combined with written records, I’m sure this is the tomb of the Verkarth vampires.”

“Interesting…” Lorvyn muttered. “Where did you find this map?”

Fennorian was hesitant at first. “Ravenwatch Castle has quite the selection of historical documents. A decent amount on the Grey Host, too.”

Manerion studied the nervous look on Fennorian’s face for a while, then sighed. “Fennorian… do you not know I factually lived at the castle for several months in the winter of 583 and 584?”

Fennorian’s face became a frown. “No, I don’t think I ever heard it mentioned.”

“Is that so?” Manerion replied, but he didn’t expect an answer, not truly. “So… if your map is accurate, and I don’t have a reason to believe the opposite, we were at the right place at least. And you expect us to have to fight there, Lorvyn?”

“I don’t doubt it.” Lorvyn rubbed his hands together. “I’m not sure if you know of it, but as we speak, investigations are underway about a planned attack on the Skald-King of the Ebonheart Pact.”

Manerion was greatly confused by how excited Lorvyn seemed about that. “An attack? By whom?”

“Some say it was a Reach witch. Others say vampires were involved. Now… I may just be seeing connections where there are none, but I must admit… it does seem suspicious that Styriche’s tomb would be robbed shortly before this, no?”

Fennorian frowned. “How come I haven’t heard of this? Just yesterday I was speaking to a contact in Skyrim.”

Another impish smile was Lorvyn’s response. “I may have dug a little deeper. I noticed things had been… off in Skyrim, particularly Hjaalmarch, for a while already. Thus I kept a watchful eye on what was going on in the north… and I was rewarded greatly for that. It requires further investigation, but I’m quite sure this trail will lead into the snowy reaches of Tamriel’s north.”

Skyrim… apart from short visits to Eastmarch and the Rift, Manerion had never been there. He had heard of the western high-king’s rivalry with Jorunn, but then, he had heard about almost everyone’s rivalry with Jorunn.

“Did the Grey Host have any connection to Skyrim?” Manerion simply asked.

“Not that I know of,” Lorvyn responded with a vague shrug, “but I may be wrong. All I know about them is that they fought Empress Hestra, and eventually lost at the Bangkorai garrison. If they had any relations to Skyrim, even just members from there, I do not know about them. Of course, you could possibly compare names of their known members with surviving records of, say, known First Era members of Clan Volkihar, but regrettably, the only names that survive are that of Styriche himself, and two of his close companions, Fangaril and Zayzahad. Neither are known to have any ties to Clan Volkihar.” He ruffled through his hair with another shrug. “I suppose the Order may have some more information, somewhere in their archives, but I haven’t been able to find out. Risky business traveling there, these days.”

“The Order?” Manerion finally asked.

“Hush, hush… none of your concern,” Lorvyn just replied. “Not yet. Depending on how this plays out, I may invite you over for dinner sometime. But you know how the saying goes… no divulging the details on the secret society you’re a part of on the first date, and never offer a bottle of fine shein before the killing commences, right?”

Manerion just blinked, but it only widened Lorvyn’s grin.

“That said… shall we get to business, dear friends?”


End file.
